Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Science Fictions
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions (Science and academia and publishing)
Tone-Deafness Test - The Music Lab
https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td
This is a research study on perfect pitch, but also gives you a score at the end.
Needs headphones and a quiet place to be done properly. I did it on my phone, and in that interface, I found that for the dropdowns for various choices I had to double-tap the field to get the options to display.
(I achieved the 85th percentile.)
Introducing my new girlfriend
I’d like you all to meet my new girlfriend, showing off one of her projects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq4VZaPYaDA
Be sure to watch the follow-up video where she makes us a pool, and it will be best if you say to yourself, at the beginning: “How is she going to fill it up? There’s no way she’s going to fill the pool by hand, is there?!”
Jeff's YouTube playlists
This is the kind of stuff I play while I’m working from / relaxing at home.
Window: cool nature stuff
Fireplaces: perfect for cooler days
Chillhop: music and animation to chill out with
Piano Jazz: could listen to this all day (and have!)
Rain: love this when it’s raining but too cold to open the windows
Night walk: walking in cities, at night. I especially like the back-alley ones
Walking: as close as I’ll ever get to some of these places
Brown Noise: perfect for naps
Octopus intelligence
Complexity begets error
WhatIsThisThing Frequently Asked Things
https://www.reddit.com/r/WITT_FAT/
One of the more interesting Reddit groups is What Is This Thing… and this is the lest of commonly-asked-about things you are supposed to check before you ask about something.
To my Letters Against Isolation teammates
From the Letters Against Isolation project.
- To avoid burnout:
- Take a week off if you wish (everyone needs a vacation!)
- Adjust the number of letters you write… 4 is my magic number now, after struggling to do more before.
- A short note is as good as a long letter (and getting anything at all is way better than nothing!).
- I found that the more letters I did, the more I was unhappy with the look of my writing. So I decided to print my letters with my computer, using some nice hand-printing fonts. And because of that, I found that if I make a 2-column letter template, with the text at the bottom, I can fold it I half sideways (text out), then fold it down, to make a free-standing "card", to which I add some stickers and color doodles.
- The back of my "card" has the LAI name and website so people know the source of the letter.
- I use a single envelope to send the letters (they are bigger card envelopes, left over from some really bad cards I decided I couldn't in good conscience use 😊), which, at least for the amount I'm sending, uses only two stamps. I use "Letters Against Isolation" for the return address name so they know what the envelope is.
- I still struggle with what to write, so it's definitely easier for me to do short cards as opposed to longer letters. This is because I massively overthink everything. I'm working really hard to not do that. For right now what works for me is to do a nice greetings, wish them well, and provide a quote that fits my very strict requirements of What To Send To Someone I Don't Know Going Through Who Knows What.
And most importantly:
- These are just ideas of mine, how it makes sense for me to do it… I do *not* claim to be doing it the best way, a lot of the letters I see are sooo much nicer than mine, but I'm doing what I can, given my time, talent, and energy level. Don't fall into The Facebook Trap of comparing your normal stuff with those that choose to post the very excellent stuff, it's one of the things that makes social media so dangerous. In fact, I'd encourage you to send in images of what you're doing, even they aren't "super stupendous" so that everyone can see the wide range of what's going on, and not feel bummed that theirs aren't fantastic.
Keep making the world a better place, everyone! I'm very happy to be a part of such a great project, doing what we can to bring happiness to isolating/isolated seniors.
How to stop your glasses from fogging up when you wear a mask
https://www.theverge.com/21301830/face-mask-glasses-fogging-how-to-stop-clear
Also, shaving cream can be used to stop the bathroom mirror from fogging up: rub some on, and keep buffing it with a dry cloth until it goes away.
That would probably work for glasses too.